While Republicans at the national level were in a hurry to shove him aside, Republican opinion had not hardened against Mr. Akin in Missouri, in part because of the salience of the abortion issue. “The congressman is totally, firmly, solidly pro-life,” Sharon Barnes, a member of the state Republican central committee, said, adding that Mr. Akin believed “that abortion is never an option.”

Ms. Barnes echoed Mr. Akin’s statement that very few rapes resulted in pregnancy, adding that “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it.”

“That’s more what I believe he was trying to state,” she said. “He just phrased it badly.”

Ms. Barnes said that she believed that the controversy would blow over, and that once people in the state became more familiar with Mr. Akin, they would learn “what a great, conservative, godly man Todd Akin is, and they’ll put his comment in its proper context.”

That’s right; according to Sharon Barnes, God sometimes “blesses” women with children by having them raped.

This is why Akin is still staying in the Senate race — his medieval views have the backing of countless religious fanatics in Missouri.